Kyrillos confident he can pull off Senate upset

Wednesday

May 30, 2012 at 12:01 AMMay 30, 2012 at 11:30 AM

David Levinsky @davidlevinsky

DELANCO — He’s been described by one pollster as being “as close as a politician can get to anonymous,” and he’s trying to unseat an incumbent U.S. senator with a nearly $10 million campaign war chest in a state that has not elected a Republican to Congress’ upper house in more than three decades.

But state Sen. Joseph Kyrillos says he likes his chances.

“The law of averages is with me,” the Monmouth County legislator quipped Sunday in Delanco, where he was riding with Republican Congressman Jon Runyan in the township’s Memorial Day weekend parade.

But joking aside, Kyrillos, who has served in the New Jersey Legislature since 1988, is serious about his campaign to unseat Democrat Robert Menendez, who has served in the U.S. Senate for the last seven years.

Although recent statewide polls place him 10 points behind the incumbent and suggest he's widely unknown to most voters, Kyrillos is still a heavy favorite to win the Republican nomination in next week’s primary election, and he believes over the ensuing five months that he’ll be able to convince voters to elect him as Menendez’s replacement.

“He is, in my judgment, not an effective senator. I think once I introduce myself to the voters over the coming months, they’ll realize I can be a strong and active U.S. senator ... and make a difference for our state in Washington,” Kyrillos said. “It’s a particularly unique and anxious time for the country. People all around New Jersey realize that Washington has broken down, and we’ve got to elect new people in order to change things.”

High on his list of criticisms of Menendez and the Democrat-controlled Senate is their failure to propose a federal budget for the past three years.

“That would never go in any boardroom in America or any small business, or, frankly, any family household. It’s unconscionable,” he said.

He agrees with proposals to withhold senators’ salaries if they fail to pass a budget in a timely manner.

“I’m not usually for what I might consider a gimmicky response to a real practical problem like this. That’s usually not my style, but I agree with it," Kyrillos said. "Do your job. Do what people sent you down there to do. Yeah, of course it’s not easy to get 100 people to come to a consensus on something as challenging as the budget of the United States. But that’s why you ran for U.S. Senate, and that’s why people elected you.”

Kyrillos also supports a balanced-budget amendment, repeal of the health care reform law, and a simpler tax code that rewards “job creators” and “middle-income families.”

“We know what the problems are and what the challenges are. The solutions are not the stuff of rocket science,” he said. “They’re practical, they’re difficult, and it demands an intellectual honesty to make the hard decisions that are required.”

Menendez’s campaign countered that Kyrillos’ record in Trenton was nothing to crow about.

“The truth is that Joe Kyrillos has a 24-year record as a Trenton insider supporting irresponsible budgets that increased state spending and dug a hole of state debt,” campaign manager Michael Soliman said Tuesday. “U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez is doing exactly what New Jerseyans elected him to do — he is fighting back for middle-class families."

Menendez’s campaign also was critical of Kyrillos’ background as chairman of the New Jersey Republican State Committee, calling it “one of the most partisan jobs in Trenton.”

Kyrillos said he would work with both parties and any president “in order to produce positive outcomes for the country.”

Recent statewide polls offered both hope and concern for the Republican underdog. A Quinnipiac University poll from earlier this month found 75 percent of New Jersey residents don't know enough about Kyrillos to form an opinion about him.

But Menendez’s numbers in the same poll were hardly stellar, with 37 percent of voters having a favorable view of the incumbent Democrat and 26 percent having an unfavorable opinion.

“(Voters) know we have to do better. Things are worse now than they were even four, five or six years ago,” said Kyrillos, who predicted his poll numbers would improve over the summer and fall as both campaigns begin spending money on advertising.

In the meantime, he appears content to crisscross the state trying to drum up support the old-fashioned way: by campaigning in person at parades, meetings and other gatherings. Besides riding in Delanco’s parade, Kyrillos attended breakfasts and ceremonies in Somerset, Ocean, Atlantic and Middlesex counties over the holiday weekend.

“I know the importance of being active and visible and accessible in South Jersey,” said Kyrillos, who kicked off his campaign in February with a rally in Evesham.

During a presidential election year, he also knows that much will depend on the performance of the GOP's pick for the White House.

On that matter, Kyrillos is untroubled. He is a longtime supporter of presumptive nominee Mitt Romney and predicted the former Massachusetts governor would help bring independents and moderate Democrats over to the Republican column.

“President Obama may win New Jersey, but I think it will be a relatively tight contest,” he said.

Runyan, R-3rd of Mount Laurel, said he was hopeful that more newcomers like Kyrillos would get elected to the Senate, which he frequently has criticized for failing to take up dozens of House-approved bills.

“It’s process. If they’re not taking up companion bills, the process is broken,” Runyan said Sunday. “One solution might be fresh blood who are willing to not always do the politically expedient thing, which in the Senate’s case is to do nothing.”

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